318 pages ; 22 cm

This book is an attempt to describe, not the personal religion of the author, but the glimpse of the Universe that his fellow-historians and he are able to catch from the point of view at which they arrive through following the historian's professional path

pt. 1. The dawn of the higher religions: The historian's point of view ; The worship of nature ; Man-worship : the idolization of parochial communities ; Annexe: "Moloch" and Molk ; Man-worship : the idolization of an ecumenical community -- Man-worship : the idolization of a self-sufficient philosopher ; The epiphany of the higher religions ; Encounters between higher religions and idolized o ecumenical empires ; Annexe: Christian martyrs against Roman military service ; The diversion of higher religions from the spiritual mission to mundane tasks ; Encounters between higher religions and philosophies ; The idolization of religious institutions -- pt. 2. Religion in a Westernizing world: The ascendancy of the modern Western civilization ; Annexe: Seventeenth-century forebodings of the spiritual price of the seventeenth-century revulsion from religious fanaticism ; The world's rejection of early modern Western Christianity ; Annexe: Two seventeenth-century Western observers' views of Western Christianity as an instrument of Western imperialism ; The breakdown of the Western Christian way of life and the seventeenth-century Western reaction against the West's Christian heritage ; Annexe: Contemporary expressions of the seventeenth-century West's reaction against the West's Christian heritage: Moral indignation. Intellectual doubts ; The seventeenth-century secularization of Western life ; Annexe: Contemporary expressions of the seventeenth-century West's revolt against the principle of authority and its adoption of the methods of observation and experiment: The revolt against the principle of authority. The adoption of the methods of observation and experiment ; The world's reception of a secularized late modern Western civilization ; Annexe: Contemporary expressions of the seventeenth-century West's revulsion from the West's traditional religious intolerance: Pagans and atheists have been no worse than Christians. Muslims are no worse than Christians, except at the trade of making infernal machines ; The re-erection of two Greco-Roman idols ; The idolization of the invincible technician ; The religious outlook in a twentieth-century world ; Annexe: The seventeenth-century reaction in the West against religious intolerance: The pertinence of seventeenth-century motives in the twentieth century. A resort to force is apt to provoke a resistance which may recoil upon the aggressor. Religious conflict is a public nuisance which easily becomes a public danger. Religious conflict is sinful, because it arouses the wild beast in human nature. Religious persecution is sinful, because no one has a right to stand between another human soul and God. Religions cannot be inculcated by force--There is no such thing as a belief that is not held voluntarily. Absolute reality is a mystery to which there is more than one approach. The pilgrims exploring different approaches are fellow-seekers of the same goal ; The task of disengaging the essence from the non-essentials in mankind's religious heritage ; Selves, suffering, self-centredness, and love

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

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